Costuming and Design in Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- Nick Fury, Black Widow, and S.H.I.E.L.D.

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon. 
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes.
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU. 
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky.

People love to namecheck spandex when talking about superhero costumes, but as far as I recall there's no spandex to be seen anywhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Cap's costume toned down to a subtle navy blue for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the most comicbook-looking character we see is Nick Fury.

With each new appearance, I've grown to love Nick Fury's costumes more and more. Not just because they look cool, but because of the internal logic of why he dresses like that. To understand what I'm getting at here, take a moment to think about S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, and Fury's role within the organization.



In The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other Marvel movies, S.H.I.E.L.D. is portrayed as a quasi-governmental Men in Black organization. It's populated by military types, agents like Coulson, jumpsuit-wearing Helicarrier personnel, and a smattering of individuals like Black Widow and Hawkeye. Fury is in charge, with Maria Hill as the deputy director and Alexander Pierce as his immediate superior, a kind of liaison between S.H.I.E.L.D. and various world governments.

Up until now Fury was the authority figure, a character who swoops in and solves problems or tells the heroes what to do. He was basically a trigger-happy, morally ambiguous Gandalf figure.

CATWS brought in a much-needed new dimension of fallibility to Nick Fury, as well as showing him inside S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters for the first time. Alexander Pierce, in his old-fashioned but stylish three-piece suits, both fits in with those surroundings and represents the political establishment. Meanwhile Fury, with his ostentatious black leather outfits, does not exactly seem like he belongs in a grey office building.

There's a certain internal consistency to the costumes at S.H.I.E.L.D., with Maria Hill and most of the Helicarrier personnel wearing navy blue uniforms (the same shade as Cap's new uniform and his nylon biker jacket in this movie, incidentally), and characters like Coulson and Agent 13 wearing subdued businesswear.

Nick Fury does not fall into either category. He's sure as hell not wearing normal clothes that could blend into his surroundings, and I highly doubt that his outfits adhere to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s official uniform. Instead, I can only describe his favourite costume as some kind of supervillain-themed black leather cosplay outfit.

Yes, Nick Fury is a goth.

GIF by harlequinnade

Black leather trenchcoats have a long and storied history in the sci-fi/action movie genre, and it's one that I'll go into in more detail if I ever write about The Matrix. Suffice it to say that there's no practical reason why Nick Fury, a man in his sixties, would choose to wear an ankle-length leather coat every day.

This decision was surely based on style and style alone. And since we've definitely seen him wearing several different coats, I can only imagine what the inside of his wardrobe might look like.

In The Avengers

Fury has two basic costumes throughout the Marvel franchise: a black turtleneck/black trousers outfit, usually coupled with a long black leather coat, and the black "uniform" suit we see in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Aside from being totally goth, Fury's outfits have one major thing in common: they're menacing. The softest, most casual thing we ever see him wear is a dark grey cardigan when he's hospitalized after faking his death, and even then he's wearing it with some sort of bespoke leather sling that looks like a holster.

His black body armour/leather coat outfits are a blatant visual signal for badassery, while the high-collared, uniform-inspired suit he wears in CATWS is particularly interesting in that it has a lot in common with classic villain costumes. That "uniform" jacket is reminiscent of the officer's uniforms on the Death Star. Fury has the potential to "look evil," whereas Alexander Pierce looks perfectly neutral at all times. Rich and neutral, much like Guy Pearce's supervillain character in Iron Man 3, in fact.

Nick Fury's badass black outfits make him into a visually iconic figure, even within the movie itself. This has the effect of a kind of reverse disguise because as soon as Nick Fury takes off his signature costume, it's very easy for him to disappear. When people are expecting a big, imposing figure in a sweeping black coat and eyepatch, they're not going to be looking for an elderly man in a hoodie and sunglasses. I absolutely loved this costume changeover at the end, not just because of the way it utilizes Samuel L. Jackson's age but because of the link it provides with Black Widow.

I'm not overly familiar with Black Widow comics, but my impression is that she's often portrayed as a rather vampy character. Her most famous visual characteristics are her vibrant red hair and shiny black catsuit, which is generally drawn to be sexier than the version we see in the movies. I'm happy with the MCU's interpretation of her appearance, partly because it allowed me to develop a pet theory about her hair.

The movies obviously had to keep Back Widow's red hair, but instead of going for a natural shade like Pepper Potts, they went for a bright red tone that could only come from a bottle. That's where my comparison with Nick Fury comes in. I think that Black Widow purposefully dyes her hair such a noticeable shade because it then becomes her defining feature. The result? As soon as she changes her hair colour to something else, she can easily slip under the radar. Another reverse disguise, just like Nick Fury's carefully constructed image as a leather-wearing badass.

I'm ambivalent over whether we ever see Black Widow's own "real" dress sense. Perhaps she doesn't even have one. In Iron Man 2 she wears tight, expensive businesswear while undercover as Tony Stark's new P.A., while in The Avengers we see her wearing a similar costume to the jeans and leather jacket she wears for a few scenes in CATWS. The dark leather blazer she wears in the graveyard scene looks far closer to the kind of thing we might expect from the comics (although I also think it looks about 15 years out of style, despite being a $2,400 Burberry design).

Black Widow is meant to be a very enigmatic character, and her ability to change and utilize her appearance means that her costumes are understandably difficult to pin down.

When you see Steve and Natasha together they both appear to be wearing generic, nondescript clothes, but they chose them for very different reasons. Steve probably doesn't know how to shop and may just have picked out the plainest thing possible, whereas Natasha has the capacity to put a great deal of thought and analysis into what image she wants to present to the world.

For me, the most important aspect of Black Widow's costuming in CATWS is that it's yet another volley against the idiots who think Scarlett Johansson is only onscreen to look pretty. Even in a general sense CATWS is the most sexless movie in the entire franchise, and the most sexualised Black Widow situation is perhaps a split-second shot of her butt in the catsuit in an early scene. (Incidentally, Guardians of the Galaxy was pretty awful in this regard.)

When she's wearing what we assume are her own clothes, she wears skinny jeans and casual jackets, and when she's in disguise she wears a baggy grey hoodie and sneakers. Her t-shirts for each outfit are so similar that they might as well have come from a multipack. In other words, a selection of incredibly normal, neutral-coloured outfits designed to blend in with thousands of other women in their twenties. Perfect for an accomplished spy, and perfect for the realistic tone of the movie as a whole.

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Previously: The costumes and characters of The Avengers, Part 1: SHIELD and Part 4: Black Widow & Hawkeye.

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon. 
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes.
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU. 
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky.

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Costuming and Design in Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- Steve & Bucky.

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon. 
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes.
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU.

The decision to set CATWS in Washington DC was certainly a departure from the visuals of the first Captain America movie. Compared to the sepia-toned beauty of The First Avenger, Steve's new life looks depressingly drab and grey. The car chases churn through DC traffic on concrete freeways, SHIELD headquarters looks like a cross between a multi-storey car park and an office block, and the Helicarriers are all cold, smooth glass and metal. The only hint of the warm colour scheme of Steve's youth is when he goes to visit Sam Wilson at the VA, a comforting moment among the corporate cleanliness of the rest of DC.

Each of the Avengers movies has its own distinct aesthetic, with Iron Man flitting between palaces of high-tech luxury, Thor living in a world of gold embossed armour and faux-historical alien weirdness, and Cap spending the entirety of his first movie surrounded by 1940s grime. CATWS was definitely the ugliest instalment in the franchise, which kind of worked in its favour because it highlighted Steve Rogers' isolation in 21st century DC.

Unfortunately, I don't think all of that ugliness was on purpose. One of my biggest problems with CATWS was the way they filmed the fight scenes, which I theorize was influenced by the fact that the directors have mostly worked on TV before now. The worst offender was the extended battle sequence that culminates in Steve unmasking the Winter Soldier. I know for a fact that Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan spent months working out and practicing their fight choreography for this movie, so why the hell were so many of the hand-to-hand combat scenes ruined by shaky camerawork and slowed-down frame rates?

Slowing down the frame rate is a technique you often see in fight scenes, and I think it's meant to make everything more chaotic and stressful to watch. In some instances this works out pretty well (i.e. violent battle scenes in films like Gladiator), and I suspect it's useful when an actor doesn't have much stunt training, which is why you tend to see it more in TV than in actual martial arts movies. However, I don't think it was an appropriate choice this time round.

Black Widow and the Winter Soldier's fighting styles are both meant to be very fluid and skilled, and part of that is lost when you edit everything into a rapid-fire slideshow of disjointed frames. This technique would've made sense if we were watching them fight from the perspective of a terrified civilian or something, but we're not. We're just watching a cast of characters who are physically adept and always keep a cool head in the heat of battle, and this kind of panicked camerawork doesn't work in that context. For me, it even detracted from the Winter Soldier's impact as a threatening presence onscreen. There was no reason for the filmmakers to shoot everything with a wobbly handheld camera behind someone's elbow, rather than pulling out a little and actually letting us see what's going on.



So, yeah: mixed feelings on the overall aesthetic, in part because I was dissatisfied by the way they chose to film the combat scenes. However, I did think the overwhelming greyness of DC worked in their favour. Aside from the first two scenes with Sam (running in the park and hanging out at the VA), our view of Steve's 21st century lifestyle was dominated by looming US government monuments and grey cinderblock. One of my favourite details was the fact that Alexander Pierce's brutally pared-down bunker of an office was decorated by a large picture of... the outside of his office. Seriously, it's literally just an aerial shot of the the Helicarrier bay, done in a tasteful grey to match the concrete walls of his office. TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE.

As for costume design, you will probably not be surprised to hear that I have A LOT of thoughts on this topic. First up: The Winter Soldier himself. He has one main outfit throughout the film, and the designer clearly put a lot of thought into it both from a practical standpoint, and as an opportunity for symbolism.

The Winter Soldier's costume consists of a leather jacket, reinforced combat trousers, and boots. From an in-universe perspective, the main thing we have to consider here is that this costume is obviously not Bucky's choice. It doesn't look like normal clothes because it's not for his personal comfort or convenience, it's designed for efficiency. Also, he probably spends a fair amount of time being dressed and undressed by other people, much like how his hair and nails are probably cut by some lab tech whenever he's defrosted from HYDRA's cryofreeze. Actually, his hair is the only thing that doesn't make sense in this context because long hair is not exactly practical in a combat situation, but I'll allow it because that's how he looks in the comics. Plus, the long hair makes him look less like 1940s Bucky and more like the Winter Soldier, hiding behind a curtain of sullen grunge misery.

From a design perspective, there are several things that I really enjoyed about the Winter Soldier's leather jacket. Looking back at Bucky's uniform in the first movie, it's clear that it was part of the inspiration for the Winter Soldier's costume. If you look at the button flaps along the front and the overall stockiness of the silhouette, you'll see a lot of similarities. Also, the straps across the Winter Soldier's chest make his jacket look kind of like a straitjacket. A horrible straitjacket that is probably his only item of clothing and is used to strap him down to various lab benches so evil scientists can wipe his brain and force him to murder more people. THIS IS THE MOST DEPRESSING SUPERHERO MOVIE OF ALL TIME. Ugh. Even the Winter Soldier's clothes are suffused with misery and horror, especially after you've seen him shirtless and strapped into that brainwashing machine, like a fragile sea creature whose protective exoskeleton has been forcibly removed.

I talked a bit about the mirroring between Steve and Bucky in one of the earlier installments of this review, and this is particularly apparent when looking at their respective costumes. In real life Chris Evans is only about an inch taller than Sebastian Stan, but in the first film they go out of their way to make Steve look far taller, to emphasise his change in stature. In the sequel, they concentrate more on making the Winter Soldier look as bulky as possible, helped along by Sebastian Stan's grim, purposeful body language.

I suspect that one of the reasons why Chris Evans has been cast in so many comicbook adaptations is his ridiculous physique, which is about as close to superheroic as you're likely to see in real life. Even without the punishing training regimen and padded clothing required for the Captain America role, he has that "martini glass" body shape of huge shoulders, a tiny waist, and long legs. His various costumes in the Avengers franchise tend to highlight that triangular shape, while Bucky always looks more like a rectangle.

Masks are a staple of superhero costumes, but hey, guess what? The Winter Soldier's is depressing as hell, just like every other aspect of his life.

While Steve's "mask" is more like a helmet than anything else (most obviously because he no longer has a secret identity to protect), the Winter Soldier's mask is basically a muzzle. Not only does it anonymize him with far more efficiency than the domino mask we often see him wearing in the comics, but it dehumanizes him as well, showing only a few slivers of skin to indicate that he's anything other than a relentless cyborg. With the goggles on he's almost completely faceless, and the muzzle serves to hide Sebastian Stan's expressive mouth. And while he does bark out a few orders during one of the fight scenes, that mask is not exactly conducive to friendly conversation -- possibly a subtle callback to the facial restraint we see Loki wearing at the end of Avengers. Not pleasant in the slightest.

Cap's costume has gone through several updates now. The one we see him wearing at the beginning of this movie is clearly SHIELD issue, and is about as "stealth" as you're going to get while still having a great big star emblazoned across your chest. The red part of the stars-and-stripes motif has vanished, and the star on Cap's chest has been modified to include what looks like the "wings" of SHIELD's stylised eagle logo.

This costume was based on Cap's uniform in the "Steve Rogers: Super Soldier" comics, and I think of it as the kind of costume Steve would be wearing in a Christopher Nolan-style gritty reboot. It's darker, it's "tactical," and it doesn't have the smooth, slightly cartoonish appearance of the costume we see him wearing in Avengers (which, as we already know, was personally designed by Cap fanboy Agent Phil Coulson). This costume choice is significant because we see him reject it towards the end of the film, symbolically breaking away from the morally ambiguous world of SHIELD and returning to his classically heroic roots.

Steve Rogers doesn't really have "dress sense," as such. If I ever get round to writing about the (brilliant) costumes in The First Avenger then I'll discuss that more in the context of his life in the 1940s, but in the present day, we mostly just see him wearing t-shirts and hoodies. Steve doesn't seem to care much about what he's wearing, as long as it's comfortable and clean.

His first outfit is a tight white t-shirt and workout pants, a variation on outfits we see him wearing in both of his other movies. The only difference is that this time the t-shirt isn't specified as being SHIELD-issue. He looks more 21st century than he did in Avengers (where we see him wearing pleat-fronted trousers like the old man that he is), but aside from that he isn't exactly a fashion icon. His most significant costume-related choice is his decision to don his antique costume from the Smithsonian, which is meaningful on several levels.

Wearing a brightly coloured jumpsuit with a great big target on your torso probably doesn't seem very practical from an urban camouflage point of view, but for Steve Rogers, it's perfect. Why is he wearing the costume? So people will know that he's Captain America. He's trusting that people will see him and rally around him, because that's the whole point of Captain America.

That Cap/Falcon conversation ("How do we know which ones are the bad guys?" "They'll be the ones shooting at us.") isn't just a snappy one-liner, it's a tactical decision. In a war where no one is wearing a uniform and anyone could be the enemy, Steve is consciously choosing to represent one side instead of sneaking into SHIELD headquarters in disguise. He'll be able to tell who the bad guys are because they're shooting at him... and loyal SHIELD agents will know that if you're shooting at the dude in the red, white and blue superhero costume , then you're the enemy.



There's also the possibility that the vintage Captain America costume helps Bucky regain his memory for long enough to stop murdering Steve in the face. Steve's 21st century hair, clothes and uniform would all render him well-nigh unrecogniseable to Bucky's distant memories of their life together, which are almost entirely subsumed by the Winter Soldier's conditioning. Cap's old wartime costume is the only thing that stands a chance of seeming familiar. Plus, it's kind of appropriate that we see Steve fall from the Helicarrier in the same costume he was wearing when Bucky fell from the train, and when he finally crashed the Red Skull's plane into the ice himself. 

Continued in Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon.

Bucky's role in this movie is the point where Marvel nerd and non-nerd audiences part ways. Going by the reactions I've seen from film critics and my non-fan friends, Captain America: The Winter Soldier was an entertaining popcorn flick that probably should've had more dialogue and fewer action sequences. But if you go by Captain America fandom, EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS FILM WAS AGONY AND LIFE IS A WORTHLESS HELLSCAPE UNTIL STEVE AND BUCKY CAN BE TOGETHER AGAIN.

Needless to say, I fall into the latter camp. If you want to preserve the illusion of this blog as an impartial source of pop culture analysis, stop reading this post and wait for the next part of the review, because I have A Lot Of Feelings about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.



Marvel Studios movies are very good at making everything equally engaging for new and old audiences alike, but I suspect that Winter Soldier was their first stumbling block. CATWS has inspired an overwhelmingly positive audience response so I wouldn't describe this issue to be a "failure," but there's clearly a gap between people who came into the movie already invested in Bucky Barnes, and people who didn't. It's kind of like if someone made a movie about Sherlock Holmes' return from the dead, but half the audience were only familiar with Watson and therefore didn't understand why everyone was freaking out over the dead guy who reappeared an hour and a half into the movie.

I saw several reviews that pointed out the Winter Soldier had very little screentime for a title character -- in fact, that the film more or less could've stood up without him. And from a plot perspective, I suppose it could. They could've swapped him with any old assassin character, and the plot would've worked out just fine. Except this fails to take into account the fact that Bucky is the emotional core of the Captain America story thus far. To fully understand this, we need to go right back to the beginning of the first movie, when Steve and Bucky were growing up together in Brooklyn.


I've already written about how lonely and miserable Steve Rogers is throughout CATWS, but I think it's fair to say that he's not just lonely for all the friends he lost in the 1940s -- he's lonely for Bucky, specifically.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky," he says, when he finds out who the Winter Soldier truly is. Steve certainly misses Peggy and the Howling Commandos, but that loss is bittersweet. He at least knows that Peggy lived a long and happy life, and besides, he only knew Peggy and the Commandos for a few months, whereas he and Bucky had been living in each other's pockets since childhood. Steve's scene with Peggy is upsetting because it's the one moment that really highlights the time travel aspect of the Captain America story: he can never go back. Peggy went on without him -- she had to.

But Bucky's absence is more like (to use a rather inappropriate analogy) a missing limb. Not only did Bucky never get anything remotely approaching a happy ending, but Steve never really got any practice at functioning without him. Within days of Bucky's death, Steve was piloting an aircraft into the ocean, and when he woke up he was thrust straight back into active service, in a totally alien environment but with SHIELD governing his every move -- even stationing a spy at his door.



Even in the 21st century, Steve is still living in the middle of a war story -- or a post-war story, as he fails to get the closure he needs because he never really "came back" from WWII. The soundtrack even includes a classic wartime love song about missing and then being reunited with your sweetheart, It's Been A Long, Long Time:

"Haven't felt like this, my dear
Since I can't remember when.
It's been a long, long time.

You'll never know how many dreams
I've dreamed about you.
Or just how empty they all seemed without you.
So kiss me once then kiss me twice
Then kiss me once again.
It's been a long, long time."

Steve has a copy of this song in his apartment, and the lyrics really could fit with anything: Peggy ("Kiss me once again."), Bucky ("Haven't felt like this since I can't remember when.") or even just his old life in general ("You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you."). Honestly, it's quite astonishing how much misery this movie manages to pack into two hours of action sequences and espionage subplots, especially since Captain America is supposedly one of the "lighter" superheroes, compared to the unending grimdarkness of Batman. I guess this is the difference between "manpain" and "a man in legitimate emotional pain."



By this point Steve already been in the 21st century for about two years, and we don't see much evidence that he's failing to deal with the 21st century as a concept. He's a resilient guy, after all. What we do see is him being horribly lonely and no longer displaying much of the optimistic, target-oriented attitude we see in the '40s. I suspect that if Bucky was still with him, things would be very different.

The thing is, Steve and Bucky's friendship wasn't just a "they grew up so they're as close as brothers," thing, it's way more dynamic than that. Their relationship may be symbiotic, but it was never particularly balanced. Growing up, Steve was sickly and physically weak but had precisely the same personality as he does now: unendingly hopeful and moral, but with no conception of backing down from a fight. Hence why he's constantly getting beaten up, with Bucky having to wade in and finish those fights for him. Bucky is incredibly protective of him, which must have caused a fair amount of confusion when Steve turned into a near-indestructable supersoldier.



It's a classic partnership between idealism (Steve) and pragmatic cynicism (Bucky), with Bucky playing the role of Steve's protector and #1 fan. It takes the supersoldier serum for everyone else to realise what Bucky knew all along: that Steve is an inspirational figure, destined for great things.

There's this beautiful transitional moment in the first movie when Steve has just rescued Bucky and the other soldiers from the Red Skull's lab, and Bucky calls out for everyone to cheer for Captain America. This is the first time Steve has received outside recognition for being the person he is, and you can tell that while Bucky's happy for him, he's also a tiny bit resentful because he knows Steve is no longer "his". The tables have turned, and now Bucky is walking in Steve's shadow, rather than the other way round.

GIFs by rogersbarnes

Before, Steve had resented Bucky for his physical strength and the way he was able to get into the army while Steve was repeatedly marked down as physically unfit for duty. After he becomes Captain America, the tables begin to turn, with Bucky probably recognising that Steve's strength and heroism come at a price (to their friendship, at least). But in the end that resentment between them doesn't matter, because whichever way you flip it, they define each other.

CATWS purposefully sets up tons of parallels between them -- Steve falling from the Helicarrier just like Bucky fell from the train, Bucky being defrosted, Bucky being strapped down in the chair like Steve was when they gave him the serum, Bucky being physically "improved" in a twisted mirror-image of Steve's supersoldier perfection, the pair of them facing off along that walkway on the Helicarrier -- which serve as a constant reminder of how closely their stories are intertwined. Even when Bucky isn't onscreen, he's still always lurking in the background, out of the corner of Steve's eye.



The most significant moment is surely the end of their showdown on the helicarrier, when Steve finally gives up. For the first time ever, he backs down from a fight. Why? Well, he certainly can't bring himself to kill Bucky. But there's also the fact that fighting Bucky no longer serves any purpose. Steve doesn't really have anything to live for if Bucky doesn't remember him, and he's already fulfilled his mission by bringing down the three HYDRA helicarriers. Bucky isn't the "enemy," he isn't a bully, he's just a malfunctioning weapon who can't help what he's been programmed to do.

This is the point where I flush all my emotions down the toilet and go to live in an igloo made of frozen tears, because what the hell. This is a goddamn SUPERHERO MOVIE where the denouement is the hero surrendering because he can't cope with living in a world where he's killed his best friend. Earlier on when Steve tells Sam that he doesn't want to kill Bucky, he's not just saying that he can't kill Bucky, he's tacitly admitting that he might even fuck up the whole mission and endanger millions of lives because he can't use lethal force against his friend. Then Captain America just casually drops his shield into the Potomac, because he knows he isn't coming back from this.



Watching CATWS the second time, one thing that really hit me is how brilliant Sebastian Stan's performance is. He may not have as big a role as Nick Fury or Black Widow, but by god does he make his limited screentime count. In particular, every one of his action sequences stands out because his fighting technique is so much more brutal than anything else onscreen. Steve's fighting style is designed to be this combination of extreme gymnastic ability and slightly old-fashioned martial arts techniques, and Black Widow's style is beautifully fluid, but in the end the Winter Soldier is just terrifying.

Compared to the badass but relatively generic hand-to-hand scenes between Steve and the various HYDRA goons, the Winter Soldier is a whirlwind of pure death. He tears the steering wheel right out of Steve's car. He skids across the road, using his metal hand as a brake. Hilariously, he stands right in front of Fury's car to blow it up, which kind of does away with the Winter Soldier's image as an invisible ghost.

In the middle of a film that's all about shades of grey and working out who you can trust, the Winter Soldier is simultaneously the scariest character in the film... and never really "evil." He's single-minded and brutally violent, but he never gives the impression of being unpleasant in the way of Alexander Pierce, Sitwell, or any of the HYDRA footsoldiers.

I've seen a handful of comparisons with Loki because they are both, I suppose, "ambiguous villains." But to me they honestly seem like polar opposites. The whole point of Loki is that he's easy to understand and empathize with as a character, but he's still a cruel and malevolent person. Plus, most of his decisions boil down to, "Because I want to." Beside him, the Winter Soldier seems like a motiveless vacuum, devoid of emotional responses or desires until Steve shows up to knock a hole in the wall between Bucky and his memories.



So yeah, by the time we get to the two or three scenes where Sebastian Stan actually gets to act with his face and voice, I am a shriveled husk of my former self. Thor and Loki's relationship is probably the most fleshed-out and compelling in the MCU, but the death and resurrection of Bucky Barnes still manages to be a goddamn operatic tragedy in about a tenth of the screentime.

This entire movie is basically a set-up for Steve's quest to find the Winter Soldier and bring Bucky in from the cold in the next movie, and their tiny handful of scenes together is enough for me to pack my belongings and move to a cabin in the woods where I can cry in peace. But before I do that, let's talk about why Sebastian Stan deserves 500 Oscars.

First up, well done for managing to illustrate the true meaning of Bucky's Red Room/HYDRA mind-wipes in just one scene.

The Winter Soldier's relationship with Alexander Pierce is a direct parallel to Steve's relationship with Nick Fury. Steve is able to doubt Fury's trustworthiness because he has such a solid bedrock of moral certainty, but Bucky never had that luxury, even back when he was fully himself. Now, Bucky's mind is a quicksand, and Pierce may be the only vaguely familiar face he knows. Having imprinted onto Pierce like a baby duckling, why not believe him when he says the Winter Soldier "shaped the century"? (Yet another parallel between Steve and Bucky, by the way: Captain America shaping the world as a heroic icon, while the Winter Soldier shapes things from the shadows, carrying out anonymous assassinations on behalf of HYDRA.)

The Winter Soldier's facial expressions are almost childlike here, and the way he passively accepts that mouth guard tells you everything you need to know. He could probably kill everyone in the room within seconds, but instead he just lies back and lets them torture his brain to mush for the hundredth time. Before now he seemed like such an intimidating figure, but this scene shows the Winter Soldier what he really is: a little kid or a blank slate into which people insert their own goals and missions, fully-formed.

"But I knew him," he says in miserable confusion, certain that he recognizes Steve's face from somewhere. But Pierce, the voice of God, refuses to explain any further. THIS IS JUST. TOO. UPSETTING. Sebastian Stan's entire acting career of weeping while being emotionally abused by unpleasant father figures has all been leading up to this role, and I for one am not amused.

Just in case the general emotional trajectory of this movie was to cheerful for you, the happy ending is Steve Rogers waking up in hospital after voluntarily falling to his death. Good news, Steve! Your best friend is alive enough to only half beat you to a pulp. And now he's wandering around D.C. trying to get his memory back, looking even less healthy than he did when he was in full brainwashed assassin mode. If Captain America 3 doesn't include at least one emotional embrace and/or scene where Falcon forces Bucky go to therapy, then I'm leading a mass revolt on Marvel Studios HQ, you mark my words.

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Continued in:

Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier review, Part 3 -- Black Widow & Falcon

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: Hydra, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.

Making Captain America: The Winter Soldier an ensemble cast movie was a smart decision. Not only does it make sense to position Steve Rogers as a team leader rather than a solo hero, but it avoids the tired formula of superhero + love interest + villain, plus supporting cast of sidekicks and parental figures. Steve may still take the central role, but characters like Nick Fury and Black Widow certainly don't fall into any of those categories.

As Marvel Studios slowly begins to explore other genres (Thor as an operatic fantasy, Guardians of the Galaxy as a space epic...), they can branch out into building characters with more depth and ambiguity than the traditional superhero formula allows.

I already discussed this in the first part of my review, but basically it would've been a mistake to try and build a typical 21st century superhero story around Steve Rogers. After all, his "superpowers" pretty much boil down to enhanced strength and healing abilities. There are already so many action movies about supposedly normal humans performing superhuman stunts (think of John McClane's progression from middle-aged everyman in Die Hard to indestructible teflon droid in Live Free or Die Hard) that Cap's physical strength runs the risk of seeming unimpressive when compared to, say, Iron Man.

Instead, this movie is more about the importance of teamwork and good leadership: a perfect development for a character who went from standing up to schoolyard bullies to selling American military propaganda to leading a close-knit group of commandos into Nazi-occupied Europe. Captain America's image as a hero is more about personality and symbolism than it is about Steve Rogers' ability to fall 50 feet without breaking his knees. 

Black Widow

There are far too many misconceptions about Black Widow's role in the Avengers franchise, either caused by people's existing prejudices (i.e. the assumption that any woman in a "catsuit" is just there for sex appeal), or because her characterization is subtle when compared to her larger-than-life superhero counterparts. Characters like Tony Stark and Falcon are easy to understand on a superficial level, but Black Widow tends to get overlooked because her emotions and motivations are often so obscure.



Last week I wrote an article about the way professional critics responded to Black Widow in The Avengers and CATWS, highlighting how many of them simply couldn't look past Scarlett Johansson's image as a sex symbol. Regardless of how good you think the Avengers movies are in general, it's just plain inaccurate to suggest that Black Widow is written as overly sexualized or two-dimensional. It was depressing to see how many well-respected critics assumed Black Widow's purpose was just to "kick ass" or provide eye candy, when her role is so explicitly cerebral: interrogating Loki, strategizing with Cap, and working with SHIELD to evaluate who should join the Avengers team in the first place.

After I first saw Avengers, one of the guys I watched it with immediately asked if I was irritated by the one scene that supposedly gives us a "male gaze" view of ScarJo's body: a full-body shot that showed Black Widow's back while she was interrogating Loki in the helicarrier. The thing is, to me this didn't even feel like a "male gaze" view at all. This type of movie is usually full of scenes where the camera pans up and down a woman's body for no reason, but in that scene all we really saw was a view of Black Widow from behind, as she stood and talked to Loki.

Sure, it was Scarlett Johansson in a tight bodysuit, but it was on precisely the same level as an earlier scene where we see Steve working out in a tight white t-shirt. CATWS had one vaguely male gaze-y shot of Black Widow in her catsuit... but then she spent the rest of the film in hoodies, jeans and leather jackets. This isn't so much a case of ScarJo being sexualised by the filmmakerss, but of viewers sexualizing her because, well... she's hot. You could say exactly the same thing of half the male actors, particularly since Cap, Bucky and Thor have all had at least one shirtless scene so far. The main difference is the all-too-common assumption that a hot female character is just there for decoration/sex appeal, whereas a hot male character is hot in addition to being a character in his own right.

CATWS gave us the most complex look we've seen of Black Widow so far. Her characterisation was just as subtle as we've come to expect, but this time round it fit much better with the film's overall tone as an espionage thriller. Plus, she was actually given second billing on the cast list, which is unheard-of for a female character who isn't a love interest.

In the action/adventure genre, we typically see movies that focus on either a male hero with a female love interest, a team where men outnumber women by about five to one, or a female hero wjth large supporting cast of men to "balance it out." Black Widow is a rare example of a female action movie character being given the kind of platonic ally/partner role that would usually be taken by a dude.

For me, the most revealing Black Widow moment was right at the end, during the graveyard scene. In her three MCU appearances so far, Natasha is characterized as competent, reserved, analytical and untrusting, with a very dry sense of humour. The breakdown of SHIELD exposed more of her emotional vulnerabilities, particularly when Fury "died" and then revealed that he didn't trust Natasha enough to let her in on the secret.

It now seems likely that she was feeling miserable all along, but this only becomes apparent at the end, when she's suddenly all smiles and excitement at the prospect of forging a new life for herself. After the horrifying discovery that she went from the KGB to a supposedly "good" organization that was actually rotten to the core, she's finally at a point in her life where she no longer takes orders from anyone. So while she's definitely less of a basket case than Steve Rogers, that graveyard scene gives us some perspective on how much effort had gone into her expressionless and intimidating demeanor at SHIELD.

One slightly bizarre comment I saw the other day was that all those "you should date this girl from the office" scenes between Natasha and Steve were somehow too ~stereotypically feminine~ for Natasha. Like... don't talk about people's love lives, because it's too girly? Or something? I don't subscribe to that interpretation, partly because I doubt the writers were trying to characterise Black Widow as a tween girl at a sleepover, and partly because there are so many more interesting ways to look at those conversations.


Natasha is incredibly perceptive, and no doubt understands that Steve's problems have less to do with his fish-out-of-water situation, and more to do with his crushing loneliness. Steve gives every impression of genuinely liking people, but he's lost everyone he ever knew and is surrounded by people that he doesn't really trust. He's so lonely that he's at the point of having intensely emotional conversations with a guy he met while jogging at the park, so Natasha is making the effort to help him improve his social life. All of those girlfriend recommendations also come with a subtextual hint that she doesn't want to date him, thus discouraging the possibility of him getting too attached. She's purposefully putting herself in the role of team member rather than potential love interest, and as a result they seem to have a pretty close relationship already -- or as close as you can ever get to Black Widow.

Falcon

One of the very few ~spoilers I heard before I saw this movie was that in terms of storytelling tropes, Sam Wilson's role was very similar to that of a love interest. And you know what? It totally was.



Right from the first time he appears onscreen, Sam is characterized as an appealing and fundamentally good character. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to describe that park scene as a meet-cute, with Steve being so drawn to Sam that he has to befriend him, and Sam being so open and receptive that he invites Steve to come visit him where he works.

On their second meeting, Steve is impressed by Sam's work as a counselor for military veterans, and the two of them almost immediately open up to each other about intensely personal aspects of their lives: the death of Sam's best friend, and Steve's uncertainty about his life in the 21st century. This exchange has such an impact that Steve feels able to show up on Sam's doorstep as a fugitive, and Sam is willing to risk his life to fight alongside him. The film ends with the implication that Sam is going to quit his job to go help Steve track down the Winter Soldier.



Bear in mind that I'm not saying "Falcon is literally Cap's love interest," but rather, "Falcon's role is structured like a love interest in a typical superhero/action movie." Another thing that supports this interpretation is the fact that he is by far the most emotionally balanced character in the entire movie. He's also explicitly characterized as being a nurturing kind of person, working as a group counselor at the VA and encouraging Steve to discuss his feelings.

In most superhero movies, the (female) love interest is a calming influence, without any serious emotional problems of her own. Hilariously, the only exception that comes to mind is the incandescently awful Spider-Man 3, in which Peter Parker proves himself to be a terrible boyfriend on multiple fronts, including belittling Mary Jane's low self esteem to her face. If you look at love interests like Pepper Potts, Lois Lane, and Jane Foster from the Thor movies, they're all on a relatively even keel when compared to the rampant emotional problems and/or traumas faced by their superhero boyfriends.

Now, this is partly because Iron Man, Batman etc. are obviously The Heroes, and therefore their various daddy issues and moral dilemmas take up far more screentime than whatever is going on in their girlfriends' lives. But it's also because those female love interests tend to take a supportive role, with most of their personal conflicts having something to do with their boyfriend, such as his secret identity or the dangers of his work as a superhero. Don't get me wrong here, I think Pepper Potts and Jane Foster and Lois Lane are all brilliant characters. But my point is that Sam Wilson's role is directly comparable to the way they interact with Tony Stark, Thor and Superman.

I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but the simplest explanation is that Falcon had to be introduced in a way that he could plausibly fight alongside Cap and Natasha after just a handful of scenes. The easiest way to do this was for him to be the friendliest, most likeable dude ever, which was helped along by the fact that Anthony Mackie could have chemistry with a rock. Seriously, he was pure joy to watch. GIVE ANTHONY MACKIE A FALCON MOVIE AT ONCE. And don't infuse it with excess manpain, make sure it's properly balanced like the Thor movies, which show Thor as a friendly and optimistic person who just happens to end up in difficult and depressing situations. Sam Wilson is my only hope for any of the Avengers getting some decent therapy, and oh boy do they all need therapy.

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Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Part 2 -- HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe

Previously: Part 1: "Trust No One" -- Steve Rogers as the ~gritty superhero America deserves.

When it came to using HYDRA as the antagonist once again, Winter Soldier's writers were caught between a rock and a hard place. At face value, the concept of an evil organization infiltrating SHIELD is perfect for the Winter Soldier storyline ("You shaped the century.") and can be linked in with real-world concerns about PRISM and drone strikes.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn't really create a new, more plausible evil conspiracy when they already had HYDRA ready and waiting in the sidelines of the Captain America mythos. This meant they then had to try and legitimize a scenario where thousands of SHIELD agents decided to join a blatantly evil secret society with roots in a Nazi cult -- without ever being detected. And, in many cases, without a clear-cut explanation for why they joined in the first place.

With a villain as wide-ranging as HYDRA, they had to give us a few entry characters to illustrate different aspects of the organization. Zola represented the cartoonishly evil Nazi backstory, while Alexander Pierce had a more pragmatic explanation for why he believed in HYDRA's goals. The weakest point was Agent Sitwell, as he was seemingly introduced as the "human" side, almost like the evil equivalent of Coulson's benevolent middle-management schtick in Avengers.

I understand why they chose Sitwell: He's an established character, and having him turn traitor was proof that HYDRA had been there all along, lurking under everyone's nose. Except by putting Sitwell in that role, we're now supposed to believe that this previously friendly dude has secretly been really evil all along, to the point of conspiring with lecherous senators and plotting to kill millions of people.

And yet the movie never provides us with an explanation for why he decided this was a good idea, or why nobody ever noticed. By bringing Sitwell front and centre like this, they accidentally highlighted the lack of plausible motives for becoming as a HYDRA spy.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Sitwell is the only Latino character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So while we're meant to be feeling betrayed that a familiar character turned out to be a bad guy, I think many fans are more likely to feel betrayed about the fact that it was Sitwell, specifically. After all, Sitwell isn't actually a person, he's a character who a team of filmmakers decided would best serve the story by turning evil and then dying.

Let's take a look at the trajectory of the two main SHIELD agents we see as background characters throughout the MCU: Coulson and Sitwell. Now, I love Clark Gregg as Coulson, and I think he deserves his role in Agents of SHIELD. But CATWS basically tells us that out of two recurring characters with similar roles in the franchise, the white guy was pushed to have a well-developed storyline and a huge fanbase, while the Latino character's most significant contribution was to inexplicably become an evil minion, and then a corpse.



Just to counterbalance what I've said about Sitwell's role, it's also worth pointing out that CATWS is still way more diverse than any other superhero movie in recent memory. Which is kind of a dubious honour considering Hollywood's incredibly low bar for this kind of thing, but whatever.

Out of the central cast of good guys (Cap, Falcon, Black Widow, Fury, Maria Hill and Agent 13), only one of them was a white guy, and everyone had distinct and engaging characterization. (N.B. You can read my thoughts on X-Men: First Class here. With such a big ensemble cast the X-Men series has the opportunity to reach miles ahead of any other current franchise, but they wind up shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.)



I just hope that Marvel isn't going to just going to reach this point and then plateau. There's a lot of talk in comics fandom about how the Marvel universe is far more diverse than DC, and how Marvel Studios is better than anyone else when it comes to movie adaptations. However, we're still at the point where Marvel is praised for the Thor franchise being "girl-friendly" because it has emotional depth and three female characters who aren't love interests. CATWS manages five whole women, which seems mindblowingly impressive until you notice the fact that a) the movie doesn't even pass the Bechdel Test, and b) virtually every background character is a dude.

Just to clarify, I'm not all up in arms about CATWS, and obviously I enjoyed it both as an action movie and as an addition to the MCU. This is just a reminder that even in a relatively well-thought-out movie like this, we're still measuring our standards of diversity and gender representation by the extremely low bar of "average Hollywood blockbuster," a genre that currently boasts such masterpieces as Expendables and Transformers.

Having successfully established a couple of female side-characters like Maria Hill and Agent 13, perhaps Marvel can now work their way up to something vaguely approaching gender parity for the background cast (LOL, this will never happen), or even give Black Widow her own movie. Because seriously, it's kinda ridiculous that Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy got there before her.

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Continued in:

Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Part 1 -- Trust No One.

Previously: The costumes and characters of The Avengers -- Captain America.


I've been rather entertained by the number of reviewers who smugly namechecked Edward Snowden while writing about this movie, but they do have a point. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is about as "realistic" as you're going to get in the superhero genre, in a way that I found far more satisfying than the stereotypical ~gritty reboot~ atmosphere of the Dark Knight trilogy.

Whether or not you're a fan of Nolan's Batman movies, I think it's fair to say that they were masterminded by someone who doesn't have much affection for the superhero genre, which is quite funny considering the overt silliness of The Dark Knight Rises. CATWS provided an excellent balance between a relatively realistic concept (SHIELD's PRISM-inspired surveillance helicarriers), and the inherently optimistic nature of Captain America as a character.
Steve Rogers may do a lot of punching in this movie (perhaps too much punching, dare I even say it), but his true superpower is his status as a role model and leader. In the end, it's Steve who decides that SHIELD is beyond salvation, Steve who inspires Falcon to join the fight, and Steve who persuades SHIELD agents to ignore direct orders because it's the right thing to do.

He's the guy with the guts to go first when confronting everyone from schoolyard bullies to his own superior officers, and you can really understand why people rally behind him as a figurehead. He doesn't have the firepower of Thor or Iron Man or the political sway of Nick Fury, but he's the one trustworthy rock in the shifting moral sands of SHIELD and HYDRA.


It's a little depressing to compare Steve Rogers to the bastardized version of Superman we saw in Man of Steel: a guy who needlessly fought a battle in the middle of Metropolis when he could've just flown it out into a field somewhere (hello, civilian casualties), and who then snapped the neck of his enemy. Meanwhile Captain America -- not just a soldier but also one of the few superheroes who wields an everyday gun -- primarily fights with a shield, and ends his final battle scene by lying down and surrendering because he'd rather die than kill a friend. I just wish there had been another scene like when he coordinates the civilian evacuation in Avengers, but that would've been logistically impossible because all of the public battles were desperate chase scenes across DC motorways.

The superhero genre has spent a long time trying (and usually failing) to bring compelling antagonists to the big screen. Either you get an excellent actor to play someone so utterly batshit that their motivation doesn't matter (i.e. The Joker), or you use a shades-of-grey villain with an comprehensible motive (i.e. Loki or Magneto). Then there's the additional problem of the end-of-movie showdown, which is usually only interesting on the first viewing, and in some cases not even then.

The Avengers has the best battle scene I've seen so far, because it pays attention to each of the characters' individual strengths rather than just being a rockem-sockem war of attrition. Captain America: The First Avenger was sadly one of the worst examples in this regard because Red Skull was a terrible villain, and the movie would've been vastly improved by just adding 20 minutes more of the Howling Commandos instead.

CATWS seems to have learned from its prequel's mistakes, and thus the structure of the final showdown follows a similar model to the Avengers, with the added bonus of having no specific Bad Guy for Steve to punch into submission. Instead, Steve and his allies have to deal with the far more amorphous problem of HYDRA, which now has less to do with battling a preposterously evil-looking Nazi cult, and more to do with the moral ambiguity the government establishment. You can tell by process of elimination that Alexander Pierce is the bad guy, but he's not all that different from Nick Fury -- which is kind of the point of this entire movie.

One of the central tropes of the superhero genre is the "two sides of the same coin" nature of a successful superhero/villain pairing. Superman mostly fights aliens (with the exception of Lex Luthor, who is the opposing figure for Clark Kent rather than Kal-El), Spider-Man deals with animal-themed scientists, Iron Man goes up against a lot of engineers and people with robot armour, and so on. Obviously there are exceptions, but as a rule, the most popular superhero/villain pairings are between characters who mirror each other in some way.
In CATWS, there's no central figure to take the position of the Red Skull. The waters are far murkier this time round. Bucky is Cap's direct opponent, but none of us really want Cap to "defeat" him. Professional kickpuncher Brock Rumlow (you know, the punch-kicky man) is evil cannon fodder. Zola is an expository prop. Alexander Pierce is the closest we get to a supervillain, but his power is more about what he represents than what he actually does. I'd actually say Cap's main "enemy" in this movie is the loneliness of his life in the 21st century.

The film never explores this explicitly, but CATWS is a story about a man with a death wish. Steve Rogers may not actively attempt to kill himself, but he tells Sam Wilson that he doesn't know how to be happy, and the opening action sequence involves Cap throwing his shield and helmet aside to have a pointlessly macho showdown with Batroc. His overall mood throughout the film is that of a lonely, unhappy person who no longer has a strong reason to keep going. He's sticking with SHIELD because he thinks they're  the only viable option, not because he actually believes in what they're doing.

The most depressing thing is that the film's "happy ending" is Steve finding out that his best friend is alive, but this is tempered by the fact that Bucky has spent the past seventy years going through unimaginable trauma. And I'm still not entirely sure if Steve had any intention of surviving the helicarrier being blown up, since he didn't make much effort to do anything except save Bucky. All this, from the supposedly cheerful and un-gritty Marvel Studios.
Steve Rogers is a fundamentally friendly guy who operates best when surrounded by a unit of soldiers he can trust, and CATWS dropped him into the polar opposite of that scenario. The tone is somewhere between a Cold War spy thriller ("Trust no one.") and a Bourne movie with Cap as the fugitive -- and the lack of a specific enemy means Cap is out of his comfort zone in more ways than one. He's forced to fumble his way through the unpleasant internal politics of SHIELD, where he is treated as a pawn by both Fury and Pierce, and has no one to turn to except Natasha and some guy he met while jogging at the park.

Honestly, I think this movie would've benefited from milking the "all my friends are dead" angle some more, or at least including one more emotional scene where Steve mourns or talks about Bucky. Hopefully we'll get some of that in the sequel. As it is, I was very satisfied by the way Marvel struck a balance by inserting their most wholesome superhero and into what may be their most unpleasant story concept so far.

CATWS was politically and culturally relevant without really supporting any ideology other than "freedom," and was about a thousand times more coherent than the incomprehensible mess of references in The Dark Knight Rises. Even taking into account the handful of ridiculous moments like Zola's bunker scene, I think this movie should be the new gold standard for realism in the superhero genre.

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Continued in:

Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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